


suffocator

by sparxwrites



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Character Study, Hair Brushing, Isolation, Loneliness, Memory Loss, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 01:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3231671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“In the darkness. I will meet my creator.” Lying’s voice is quiet, almost hesitant, echoing across the water and bouncing off the cold walls of the well. It’s a snippet of song they once heard, long ago – when the sky wasn’t always dark, when the moon and stars lit up the night, when the space above their head was anything but endless, endless black.</p><p>(In which Lying cleans their hair, sings, and tries to hold on to the memories slowly slipping through their fingers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	suffocator

**Author's Note:**

> this is stupid, but i'm tired and melancholy and it's the first fic thing i've managed to get out of my head and into words in over a week, so. shrugs. lying's singing [this song](http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=JDZaiM8oAOU#Daughter_-_Smother_Lyrics), for those who are curious.

“ _In the darkness. I will meet my creator._ ” Lying’s voice is quiet, almost hesitant, echoing across the water and bouncing off the cold walls of the well. It’s a snippet of song they once heard, long ago – when the sky wasn’t always dark, when the moon and stars lit up the night, when the space above their head was anything but endless, endless black.

They comb fingers through the length of their hair, feel the tangles and knots catch against ruined nails and scarred fingertips, and sigh. No matter how often they clean it, run fingers through it, try and braid it or tie it up with a torn scrap of cloth, it never stays neat. The blood seeps back in, clots in chunks and lumps, the water leaving it heavy when wet and frizzy on the rare occasions they manage to get it dry.

Sometimes they fantasise about cutting it all off – grabbing it in a handful and taking the edge of a blade to the roots of it an inch from their scalp. They imagine it falling through their fingers, into the water, until it becomes heavy enough to sink far, far down into the endless depths of the well.

(Except they have no knife, no sword, no sharp objects at all. That, and the fact that it’s one of the few things keeping them sane, down here in the godforsaken dark.)

“ _And they will all agree…_ ” The words trail off into distracted humming, the feel of hair beneath their hands tugging their concentration away from the words and towards the blessed sensation of something that isn’t icy water or jagged stone. Their eyes unfocus in the darkness, letting it press thickly against their senses on all sides.

It’s like a blanket, but an unwelcome one – both comforting and cloying, soothing and smothering.

Untangling the mess that is their hair helps a little, though. It gives them something to focus on other than the endless, black dripping, the fetid water up to their waist, the too-close walls of their cage. They hum to fill the quiet, to drown out the sounds of water drops against stone, card fingers through the length of their hair and let it ground them.

They close their eyes, let the vibrations of their humming fill them up from their stomach to their shoulders with a warmth that’s all but forgotten after so long in the cold and the dark. The sun is a distant memory, but they can still recall heat and light and yellow, the dancing shapes that formed behind their eyelids if they turned their face to it.

Most memories of the surface are like that, now. Fractures pieces of information, impressions, fleeting glimpses if they’re lucky. The sun, soil, trees changing colour from spring to autumn, the taste of bread and mead. Sometimes laughter, warm and genuine. They cling to the scraps of guttering images as best they can, replaying them over and over in their head to try and fix them in place.

(It works, but not well. The images stay, but the context is lost. They can’t remember who the laughter belonged to, and for some reason the lost knowledge makes the space between their lungs ache.)

As they’d known it would, the singing brings well sprites, though they’re slow to emerge. Lying is amazed they’re still here, after all this time – but then, they’re hardly living creatures, just dull wisps of light and excess magic that seem drawn to energy sources, movement giving them the illusion of life.

Lying doesn’t complain. They’re poor company, but company nonetheless, even if the sprites only seem to emerge to listen to them speak and then feed off the echoes.

“ _I should go now, quietly,_ ” they sing, and the wisps drift closer, drawn by the sound or by the magic leaking from them out the cracks or just by what little warmth they still have in their body. The well sprites settle around them, perched on their shoulders and spread on their lap and clustered around their hands, a little prickle of static every time their fingers brush one. “ _For my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep._ ”

(For a moment, their stomach twists, a tight clench of jealousy – the urge to lie down and let go, trade the heavy blackness of the well for the softer darkness behind their eyes. It won’t work, though. It never does, no matter how hard they try.)

Words echo back at them in quiet crackles, snippets of their voice trapped by the well sprites and regurgitated. “ _Go… go… place… sleep… go… lie…_ ” the well sprites whisper, faint and melancholy. They bounce off the walls, a tired, overlapping susurrus, and Lying can’t help but smile. It doesn’t reach their eyes.

Not that anyone would be able to notice, down here. Not that there _is_ anyone to notice, for that matter.

They pick at a particularly stubborn tangle in their hair, pretend they don’t know what the strange, warm liquid that slicks over their fingertips is, and carry on singing over the whispered echoes. The song in their head is full of holes, missing words and verses, but the melody stays true. When the words run out, they hum, let the vibrations of it fill their throat and spill out through closed lips.

The well sprites don’t complain – just listen, quiet other than their murmured mimicry, the small wisps of light tucked close to Lying’s skin. Lying finishes with the tangle, and moves onto another, taking the accomplishment as a small victory. The tangles will come back, soon, as will the blood that they work so hard to wash out. Nothing changes, not down in the depths of the well.

But for now, the hair beneath their fingers is soft, smooth; still damp, but clean. They’ve learnt to appreciate things like that while they last. “ _What a mess I leave,_ ” they sing, dipping fingers into the hip-height water to clean the blood off, feeling the water curling cold and hungry around their hands. It threatens to drag them down, and they shiver.

Pulling their hand free, running fingers through the new softness of their hair, they tilt their head up stare towards where they assume the sky should be – towards where more wisps cluster in the darkness like a poor imitation of worn-out stars. “ _What a mess I leave, to follow…_ ”

 


End file.
